


Sacramentum

by oceansinmychest



Category: Wentworth (TV)
Genre: Blood, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Ghost!Kaz, Ghosts, Halloween, Kaz-centric fic, One Shot, Season/Series 07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-22 14:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21303833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oceansinmychest/pseuds/oceansinmychest
Summary: Issued her sentence in limbo, Proctor pays a visit to friends and enemies alike. Thrust into this world of shadows, her existence pays crude resemblance to a dark Caravaggio painting. From afar, her form appears solid. Up close, she’s smoke.(Please note: This fic depicts Kaz as a ghost incorporating content from Season 7 and past seasons.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4
Collections: Spooky Tales From Wentworth





	Sacramentum

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by lingua ignota's album "Caligula," this Halloween fic is long overdue. Hypocrisy is a trending theme in the piece if some themes seem redundant or contradictory. Cheers to JoansGlove for letting me contribute this piece to her "Spooky Tales From Wentworth" number!

> “-Should intermitted vengeance Arme again his red right hand to plague us?”  
John Milton - _Paradise Lost_

Martyrdom bleeds you dry. Valiant Proctor the Protector finds that there’s no escaping the prison industrial complex. To come into power, only to be wrongfully stricken down, a dirty blade ripping into her carotid artery ended her life. When she first set foot in this place, she dragged a finger across her throat. Now, the action taunts - _haunts_ \- Proctor forevermore. 

Prison swallows you whole; this, Kaz knows. A Valkyrie ascended, only to plummet so suddenly. Caught in limbo, she longs for justice. Determined to enact on retribution, she embarks on this immortal journey. An extended sentence becomes an eternal one. Tangible and visceral, her soul remains bound to this desecrated place. Outside of prison, nothing awaits her, trapped in a vicious cycle of loss, of pain, of the undefined bundled into a wrathful ball of nerves.

Reduced to a shade wandering in circles from cell block to cell block, Kaz finds herself confined to this plane. This place has transformed itself into a Midas maze. Dizzying at times, every corridor merges together as one disorienting experience.

No monument celebrates her life save for wilted roses and curled photographs haphazardly secured to a chain-link fence in close proximity to Bea Smith’s memorial. Paper lanterns, some crumpled and others well preserved, grace the rec yard. There is no obelisk, no real tomb, to declare the finality of the situation at hand. There are other ways to grieve. This doesn’t hurt her. On the contrary, it’s the defilement of the code - the negligence and harm the women bring to each other which unsettles the fallen Top Dog.

Although sentences lessen, lengthen, or come to a telltale end, Kaz Proctor stays behind to look after the women, her loyalty undying. All the tropes ring true, the dead _don’t_ sleep. There is no need for her to lurk in the shadows. She is not the malevolent Ferguson who stepped too far, who veered from the light, who twisted the pawns to play the petty chess game.

On either side of the fence, she won’t stand for these gross injustices. She is sorry for the countless lives broken by the system, sorry for the way the Red Right Hand became a channel for her rage, sorry for not acting soon enough. She should be more bitter, angrier; yet, for the entirety of her life, Kaz has been **too much**. Not even the old, smoky wound of her father can detour her mission. Bleeding hearts seldom quit.

With Bea Smith’s blessing, she enacts small acts of benevolence. In the afterlife, she continues to put others before herself as a means of atonement - to correct the harm she inflicted on others through wrathful violence. She looks after the women. It’s the little things: a stash gone missing, a woman turned on her side to prevent herself from choking on her own vomit, a cell door ajar at a crooked angle to satisfy a screw’s curiosity. Her martyr complex won’t quit.

These are offerings of love, care, and sometimes mercy. Kaz doesn’t liken herself to a guardian angel. She’s no saint; she pays for her time now and for all eternity (cliché melodrama that it is). A fighter through thick and thin, she operates with great vigilance.

Nearly drowning, sustaining a broken arm, getting into a scrapper with Smith, and knocked from her pedestal as another tragic, untimely demise, she lost the chance to become another burnt out, strung out Top Dog. These woman respond to violence, but not anymore. In a rally for empowerment, Karen makes it her sworn resolution to change. They acknowledge her presence as a restless, protective spirit. Never spoken about, only _felt_.

Keeping the women safe from each other and themselves, she’s no CCTV, she doesn’t have eyes in the back of her head like the Freak, though now Kaz gains some ethereal leverage. She refuses for her lamentations to go unheard.

Unknown violence - the harshest injustice of all - cut her life short. Her throat feels perpetually sore, if not swollen. She’s all choked up. In the mirror, only she spies her ashen pallor come reflection true: a nasty gash, ugly and red, still oozing. Archangel Michael’s sword cut swiftly and viciously. It pains her to never know her killer, but she buries the thought, still committed to the women. The air of grief is replaced by a sworn sense of duty; it follows her, as persistent as a cheap perfume that clings to a wrinkled blouse.

If only she could hug all her girls once more. To hold onto them and never let go.

But always, always, her grip slips on through.

Caught in perpetual limbo, it pains her to see her family, her friends, in mourning. She vows to never leave them behind.

She forgives Allie for her trespasses: for choosing Bea (it was love), for handing over her phone discarded as contraband, for choosing the gear (it was for pain, wasn’t it?), for choosing Marie (was it loneliness?). In some ways, Kaz believes she’s failed Allie. Marie tugs at Allie’s heartstrings, plays her for a fiddle desperate for a love song. KangaRuby would be a far better match, in Kaz’s motherly opinion.

“I’m still here for you, Bubba,” Kaz whispers.

A touch feathers across limp, blonde strands. Try as she might, while she feels the wisps of corn silk hair, Kaz’s fingers fall through. Novak awakens from her slumber, as dazed as Sleeping Beauty, whispering the name of a woman she loved as family. Her final parting is a kiss on the crown of her head. With a conflicted, heavy heart, Allie stirs awake, sleep naught but a temporary reprieve.

“Kaz?”

She hopes that Bubba serves her sentence and leads an honest life beyond these walls. Allie deserves better. So does her crew. 

Meanwhile, Liz Birdsworth shuffles and wanders down the halls with a glassy-eyed stare. Kaz promises to keep an eye on Liz, thwarting away those angry, meaner spirits who thrive on wickedness. Reaching her cell, Liz sorts through her memory box. A crumpled piece of paper wriggles free from her grip: ‘_Kaz is dead._’

When Birdsworth is particularly dazed in a state, unable to draw up the scratchy, stiff sheets, Kaz tucks her in with extra care. Fluffs the pillow for good measure. Kaz discovers that it’s better not to speak. Her throat aches, as if she’ll die again from thirst, and oh, irony is such a bitter, _resentful_ thing. She wears a grim smile, brows pulled together in her familiar expression of concern.

A packet of biccies is left for Boomer on the nightstand. Amidst her tangled sheets, she nuzzles into bed in her animal print pyjamas. She’ll be out for parole soon enough and when she groggily awakens to the sweet treat awaiting her, she indulges with a cheeky grin in place.

At peace with herself and her mission, Dr. Miller gave her clarity, but it was Mr. Jackson who paved the way. At last, the tiger wears her hair down. Poor Mr. J tears himself asunder, his grief-stricken expression a sight for sorry eyes. Her lined face scrunches into an expression that vaguely resembles pity.

Sparkling blue eyes touched by a glimmer of sorrow drink in the sight of a screw folded over, miserable at his desk amidst the stack of papers depicting the daily minutiae. Oh, how lost the Governor looks.

Nearly drowning in the van on the way to her parole hearing, had it not been for Mr. Jackson’s intervention, she would’ve been a goner much sooner. Rocky waters with Will had softened over time along with her feelings for him. They went unspoken. Buried. In another life, perhaps Will and Karen would have had a fighting chance.

“Remember that you’re a good man, Will. These women need you,” Karen declares softly, her voice mistaken for the collapse of paper.

Watching him crumble and deteriorate, she stands in his office.

Regret ebbs and flows. As a spirit, she’s incapable of tears, though her eyes appear glassy, glossed over when taken by emotion. Although blind to the motion, she gives Rita a steady nod which becomes Kaz’s blessing in passing. The Red Right Hand’s moral code has changed. Her need to respond to violence with violence has ended.

Past history is a muddied, tangled thing. Memory’s möbius strip replays the scene and haunts her to remind her of reality’s harshness. The knife sails far too quickly. She never sees the assailant’s face, though she learns to remember _his_ smell. Again and a-fucking-gain, her blood splatters the brick wall. Her hand stained maroon clamps over her throat to put pressure on the ugly, gaping wound. She gurgles and she gasps, unable to articulate herself. Her life ebbs out of her. Gasping, groaning, she lowers her arm. Issues a death sentence.

Dark and glistening, a puddle of viscera lies in the way. The squeak of her trainers softens, the sound now snuffed out by the squelch of liquid smeared across linoleum. Down these dismal corridors, Officer Brody sneers as he steps over the mess; he makes note to have a few inmates wipe away the sticky sin, as if he doesn't remember the violence exacted. Spilled blood forms a garish pair of wings that the screw turns the other cheek to. For his horrid ways, Kaz smites Brody. Boiling anger slips through the cracks. She spits at his heels in passing though he remains blind, if not ignorant. He ought to watch out.

Throughout her meandering, she spies the cross on the wall with signatures scribbled about. Two fingers trace her lips before she touches the paper containing a menagerie of names, blessings, and curses. As an apparition, she remains proud. Maybe it all chalks up to a saint complex.

Witnessing Marie rise to power as Top Dog tears her asunder.

Thrust into this world of shadows, her existence pays crude resemblance to a dark Caravaggio painting. From afar, her form appears solid. Up close, she’s smoke.

A mist rolls in. Saturates the hall, the cell block, and threatens to suffocate with its blanketed embrace. For once, a frown tugs at Marie’s lips as the stench of death follows. Initially, Proctor appears as a silhouette projected against the wall. The blue of her eyes intensifies. She comes to Marie, the wound across her throat greater than the Red Sea. Her neck oozes though it isn’t as crooked as Steven’s had been after the fall. A bent finger traces the motion, as if she condemns this woman to the guillotine. The flesh makes no attempt to repair itself. No teal ribbon keeps her head glued to her body.

If Marie’s poison, then Kaz aspires to be the antidote.

“You’ll rot in here once justice is served,” Kaz reassures Marie, a ghostly grin in place. “I’ll make sure that you won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

With her back stiffened, Winter. sits upright on her cot. Marie interprets the voice as not-Kaz. Ah, but she stands in the flesh, physical and tangible. Give it a few days, a few weeks, the sight of the fallen will drive her mad. 

“We’ll keep one another company,” Proctor promises, fierce in her conviction.

Winter wants to laugh, to scoff at the audacious display. Her smile stretches tight across her manipulative, honeyed lips.

“You can’t harm me.”

“This isn’t something you can control, Marie,” she sings with a nonchalant shake of her head.

A pale finger slices across her throat, past the muddied mess of tissue and flesh. The gaping wound deepens. Widens. Glistens. She spills her blood on the floor, in the cell; one day, it will be Marie's when the prisoners choose to turn on her, no longer placated by pretty lies and cold touches.

She leaves Marie in her cell craving another fix, another hit, to take away her grief over Danny boy and to reflect over her machinations had she a pure heart. In her wake, a fog follows her wandering trail while she still drips crimson pinprick puddles, the Great Protector thrust into a liminal space once more.


End file.
